Happy New Year, Happy New BOM!!

I’ve had an idea! I’m elated, inflated and just a little bit twisted up with excitement ….

Situation normal then! As you know, I am not usually short of slightly twisted ideas and quilty enthusiasm. But I have had a hard time settling on a new BOM to replace the Beary Colourful Bears. There are so many possibilities, but nothing that quite grabbed me until now. The bears were so much fun and a hard act to follow.

So, I’ve been musing over this quandary for several months, with a mental list of criteria I wanted my 2019 BOM to satisfy. What to do? A BOM needs to be interesting all year. It needs to be relatively simple but not too repetitive. Probably most importantly, it needs to make me feel happy….. afterall, I am going to be running this sucker for ages and ages!

And I just wasn’t 110% happy with any of my ideas. Until ……. a quilt based on one of the simplest but funnest things of all time – balloon animals – burst into my head!

So, I am excited to announce the free BOM at Clever Chameleon Quilting this year will be “Love with a Twist”. A series of animal appliqués, shaped as if they were made of sculpting balloons. A party in your sewing room all year, with no risk of deflating or popping suddenly just when you least expect it. I hope you are grinning. I’m grinning. Like an eight year old who’s had too much cake and just scored the best balloon at the party.

Read on to find out more about the Love with a Twist BOM that will be available for free here at Clever Chameleon for all of 2019.

Cutting it just a little fine for a New Year start …..

So this idea inserted itself into my head on Saturday. My daughter received a bigger, better keyboard for Christmas and I was looking through my fabric stash for something to make a dust cover for it. And I found this – which of course met with my daughter’s instant approval for her keyboard.

And as this fabric sat on the keyboard while I built the Lego set I got for Christmas (yes, I got Lego for Christmas, and it’s awesome…… and no, the dust cover is not made…), an idea started growing.

And growing.

And growing!

It’s now it’s Tuesday, New Year’s Day and I have all the appliqués drawn to rough copy or better, the layout finished, the fabric requirements calculated and a rough schedule. Not bad going! Good thing I was planning to step back from the blog for a week or so to create as the mood took me anyway!

How my 2019 BOM will work

There are several options for the young at heart wishing to join me in making a balloon animal quilt. The basic options are the three outlined above. I am not showing you all the details of course…. where would the fun be in that?! Each month we will fill in a couple of those silhouettes with a cheeky balloon animal.

The appliqué blocks

There are 22 blocks available in the Love with a Twist set. They come as two subsets of ten…. which each make a lap/throw size quilt of 50.5″ x 68.5″. And two bonus blocks. You can make either or both throw quilts, and mix blocks between the two quilts….. prefer turtles to butterflies?…. no problem! Or you can collect all twenty appliqué designs, plus the two bonus blocks, and make the full size twin quilt of 62.5″ x 92″.

The timing

I will be releasing the first two blocks in January. I just need to get the background fabrics for my samples first, so not today! Realistically, not tomorrow either. I will be using scraps for all the appliqués, but I don’t have large fabric cuts on hand, so the sashing and background fabrics will need to be purchased first.

But that gives you time to get organised too.

Assuming 42″ or greater usable WOF, for a throw quilt design you will need:

• 2 ¹/₄ yards of background fabric, or a bit under 2 yards if you’d rather use scraps to make the border squares
• 1 yard of sashing fabric

OR

Also assuming 42″ or greater usable WOF, non-directional print, for the twin sized quilt you will need:

• 3.5 yards of background fabric (or 4 yards if directional print)
• 1 ¹/₄ yard of sashing
• 1 yard of border fabric

These are minimum requirements and are fairly tight. If you like to have spare fabric as insurance, you will need more of each.

And you’ll need lots of scraps for the appliqués.

I intend to release two designs per month. I won’t be sticking to a hard and fast schedule this year to release my BOM blocks. That was one thing I learned from the Beary Colourful Bears. Sometimes the Bears caused some stress because of clashes with life events, including public holidays. This year one of my goals is to wind back the false sense of “urgency” associated with blogging to an unnecessary schedule….

I am also planning on having everything published including finishing instructions by the end of November. I am even starting out with a finishing plan! That was another thing I learned from the Bears – we are not having another case of the Lingering Bears aka the Deflating Balloons. BTW, I will finish up the Beary Colourful Quilts in due course….. I have plans for them too, but we need to talk about present priorities today…..

The First block

Here is the first block that is coming. It might be 2019 already, but it is still the Lunar Year of the Dog. How best to round it out then, but with a balloon poodle? And besides, it was the balloon dog fabric that started this in the first place! The colours you choose are completely at your discretion….. this quilt is going to look great in any colour scheme -monochrome, two colour, full rainbow or anything in between!

My aim is to make each of the balloon animals from simple curved shapes. You will be able to appliqué them by your favourite method – raw edge or turned edge. Like the real thing, mouths and other details will need to be marked onto the balloons! Feel free to even use a fabric felt-marker if you wish, but I will be embroidering mine.

Remember, there will be bonus blocks

The twin sized quilt will require two bonus blocks not needed for either of the throw quilts. Then there are a couple of extra blocks that didn’t make the final cut, mostly because all the layouts were full. I will release these as the mood takes me and as time allows. The scheduled blocks will be free and available all year to the end of 2019. However, the bonus blocks will only be available for free for a limited time each. If you want to make sure you don’t miss any of the bonus blocks, make sure you are subscribed to the Clever Chameleon blog by email! I will post them to facebook and instagram as well, but I can’t control what you see in your feeds. I can tell you the first bonus block is coming on the 19th of February, as part of my project for the Show Us Your Wings blog hop with Carol of Just Let Me Quilt.

I hope you’ll be joining me!

Hands up if you love balloon animals.

I do. They remind me of parties and magic shows and fun DIY tutorial Youtube videos on lazy Saturday mornings. They make me think of street performers, and kids’ concerts and lots of other entertaining and happy places besides. I know several kids who would be pretty happy to get one of these quilts next Christmas! But truth be told, I’ll probably end up keeping one of the lap sized ones for me!

I hope you will join me and the Chameleon in collecting our new fun BOM and starting when you are ready. With all the excitement of starting a new project, the Chameleon is fit to burst! And if you are thinking of following along the BOM this year, I’d love to know.

Of course, there will be plenty of other quilts and projects all year here too, much like last year. And Colour Inspiration Tuesdays too, starting back next Tuesday. In the meantime….

Happy New Year! Here at Clever Chameleon we are wishing you a year of love, laughter and fabric fun. xx

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